293,829 research outputs found
Social machines for education driven by feedback agents
The aim of this paper is to explain some of the ways in which multi agent system (MAS) theory can be used to describe, design and enhance social machines (also referred to as Socio-Cognitive Systems). We believe there is a really opportunity for the MAS community to engage with emerging theory and practice of designing such systems. Social machines - also referred to as Socio-Cognitive Systems from the MAS community - are terms used to refer to the recent breed of technological systems which allow human and computational agents to socially interact, typically on a large scale and sometimes towards achieving shared goals. Examples include social networking platforms and crowd sourced encyclopaedias. The discussion of social machines and MAS is taken from three perspectives. Firstly, the theoretical notion of an abstract social machine as a socio-cognitive system containing humans and agents is introduced. Secondly, a speci#12;c instance of a social machine which has been designed to enable social music learning supported by agents is described. Thirdly, an agent architecture which is designed for operation within educational social machines is discussed, with particular focus on what we believe is the core currency of these machines: feedback.Much of of this work was undertaken as part of the FP7 project in the Technology Enhanced Learning Program called Practice and Performance Analysis Inspiring Social Education (PRAISE) involving the 1st and 2nd authors. We acknowledge Harry Brenton, Marco Gillies Andreu Grimalt-Reynes, Jonathan James, Edgar Jones, Julian Padget and Harko Harko Verhagen who have helped in discussions. The second author received support from the European Network for Social Intelligence, SINTELNET (FET Open Coordinated Action FP7-ICT-2009-C Project No. 286370) for short term visits to the IIIA to work with the 3rd author.Peer Reviewe
Mathematical practice, crowdsourcing, and social machines
The highest level of mathematics has traditionally been seen as a solitary
endeavour, to produce a proof for review and acceptance by research peers.
Mathematics is now at a remarkable inflexion point, with new technology
radically extending the power and limits of individuals. Crowdsourcing pulls
together diverse experts to solve problems; symbolic computation tackles huge
routine calculations; and computers check proofs too long and complicated for
humans to comprehend.
Mathematical practice is an emerging interdisciplinary field which draws on
philosophy and social science to understand how mathematics is produced. Online
mathematical activity provides a novel and rich source of data for empirical
investigation of mathematical practice - for example the community question
answering system {\it mathoverflow} contains around 40,000 mathematical
conversations, and {\it polymath} collaborations provide transcripts of the
process of discovering proofs. Our preliminary investigations have demonstrated
the importance of "soft" aspects such as analogy and creativity, alongside
deduction and proof, in the production of mathematics, and have given us new
ways to think about the roles of people and machines in creating new
mathematical knowledge. We discuss further investigation of these resources and
what it might reveal.
Crowdsourced mathematical activity is an example of a "social machine", a new
paradigm, identified by Berners-Lee, for viewing a combination of people and
computers as a single problem-solving entity, and the subject of major
international research endeavours. We outline a future research agenda for
mathematics social machines, a combination of people, computers, and
mathematical archives to create and apply mathematics, with the potential to
change the way people do mathematics, and to transform the reach, pace, and
impact of mathematics research.Comment: To appear, Springer LNCS, Proceedings of Conferences on Intelligent
Computer Mathematics, CICM 2013, July 2013 Bath, U
Webscience, 'social machines' and principles for redesigning theories of agency: a prolegomenon
This paper argues that the advent of the WWW and the principles now developing for the move âsocial machinesâ has posed serious challenges to traditional social theory. In particular, it is argued that the concept of social machines and the forms of distributed agency they imply amplify âdeep flawsâ in the underlying principles of current agency theories that make empirical work using such frameworks âundecidableâ. The occasioning of social machines and the WWW here are examined for the ways in which the traditional models of agency, involving reflexivity/skill dynamics, can be dismantled and new principles for re-designed agency theory posed. One key problem and three re-design principles are identified
Why do people buy virtual items in virtual worlds? an empirical test of a conceptual model
While organizations in software industry want to portray themselves as professional in terms of
following standards and methods, they may also have needs for improvising and short-cutting when
necessary. Such dilemmas of dual logics are sometimes internally resolved by evolving a false belief of
what is done (practice) being in correspondence to what is said (standards), regardless of what an
empirical investigation might show, something that can have poor business implications and also poor
social implications. Particularly focusing on this latter point, the meta-methodology of total systems
interventions (TSI) has been used for integrating critical systems theory with total quality
management, improving social conditions in parallel with improving business processes. Although
TSI is not designed for liberating organizations where nobody see themselves in need of liberation, the
hypothesis of this paper is that it is possible to design quality management systems as âconflict
machinesâ, causing sufficient social tension for more or less automatically changing âfake qualityâ
into âreal qualityâ. The hypothesis is investigated by applying design research in a Scandinavian
public sector organization. The findings consist of statistical and interpretative evidence for the
success of the approach, making a contribution to how TSI can be applied in the software industry
Desire Lines: Open Educational Collections, Memory and the Social Machine
This paper delineates the initial ideas around the development of the Co-Curate North East project. The idea of computerised machines which have a social use and impact was central to the development of the project. The project was designed with and for schools and communities as a digital platform which would collect and aggregate âmemoryâ resources and collections around local area studies and social identity. It was a co-curation process supported by museums and curators which was about the âmeshworkâ between âofficialâ and âunofficialâ archives and collections and the ways in which materials generated from within the schools and community groups could themselves be re-narrated and exhibited online as part of self-organised learning experiences. This paper looks at initial ideas of social machines and the ways in machines can be used in identity and memory studies. It examines ideas of navigation and visualisation of data and concludes with some initial findings from the early stages of the project about the potential for machines and educational work
Artificial morality: Making of the artificial moral agents
Abstract:
Artificial Morality is a new, emerging interdisciplinary field that centres
around the idea of creating artificial moral agents, or AMAs, by implementing moral
competence in artificial systems. AMAs are ought to be autonomous agents capable of
socially correct judgements and ethically functional behaviour. This request for moral
machines comes from the changes in everyday practice, where artificial systems are being
frequently used in a variety of situations from home help and elderly care purposes to
banking and court algorithms. It is therefore important to create reliable and responsible
machines based on the same ethical principles that society demands from people. New
challenges in creating such agents appear. There are philosophical questions about a
machineâs potential to be an agent, or mora
l agent, in the first place. Then comes the
problem of social acceptance of such machines, regardless of their theoretic agency
status. As a result of efforts to resolve this problem, there are insinuations of needed
additional psychological (emotional and cogn
itive) competence in cold moral machines.
What makes this endeavour of developing AMAs even harder is the complexity of the
technical, engineering aspect of their creation. Implementation approaches such as top-
down, bottom-up and hybrid approach aim to find the best way of developing fully
moral agents, but they encounter their own problems throughout this effort
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Overcoming restrictive technologies in police call centres: A human agency perspective
Call centres in the police force are restrictive information systems which tend to present call
operators with constraints that they need to overcome using their experience in order to offer
better services to the public. This paper is looking at how elements of human agency come in
to play and help usersâ enactment against restrictive technologies. Information systems
research on human agency has been mainly focused on the examination of whether agency
lies within human or machines or both while in this paper we take a different approach and
we clearly describe how human agency is enacted in practice. We use empirical data from
contact centres and operational rooms of five UK police forces. After extensive observations
we present how police call handlers manipulate digital information efficiently through human
agency. The theoretical framework is based on the three elements of agency theory (iteration,
projectivity and practical evaluation) The research findings assert that call handlers
overcome the restrictions of the system by forming human-digital networks and using mental
structures from their past experience in order to cope with the task at hand. The paper
concludes by drawing implications for theory and practice and suggests future research
directions
The Role of Imagination in Social Scientific Discovery: Why Machine Discoverers Will Need Imagination Algorithms
When philosophers discuss the possibility of machines making scientific discoveries, they typically focus on discoveries in physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. Observing the rapid increase of computer-use in science, however, it becomes natural to ask whether there are any scientific domains out of reach for machine discovery. For example, could machines also make discoveries in qualitative social science? Is there something about humans that makes us uniquely suited to studying humans? Is there something about machines that would bar them from such activity? A close look at the methodology of interpretive social science reveals several abilities necessary to make a social scientific discovery, and one capacity necessary to possess any of them is imagination. For machines to make discoveries in social science, therefore, they must possess imagination algorithms
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